Watrous & Valmora - author notes

Welcome to the fourth week in the comment contest (see below)*** containing six weeks of entries in an author-note series for Tall Tales Shorter Days.  The fourth story in On Stranger Winds was a personal break from some of the book's darker content. Not that this story isn't scary for the right age group, but unlike more gruesome stories (such as Jitter), "The Pumpkinheart Tales" were written in mind (but not to compare) with the likes of Frank Baum, Roald Dahl, Madeleine L'Engle or Dianna Wynne Jones, which I think are still a great read at any age.

Watrous & Valmora is basically an adventure story following a young girl (costumed as royalty) chaperoning her younger brother, a werewolf, out for trick or treats on the night of Halloween. With its full title - Watrous & Valmora: Further Tales of Pumpkinheart - the story describe a Halloween chain of circumstance after a bit of candy greed starts the engines of unexpected havoc. What ensues involves a magical jewel, a weird scarecrow, a talking cat, a mournful ghost, armies of bats and ravens, as well as other oddities, and not to forget, a terrible witch.

You can actually read the story, in its entirety, here on the Bindlegrim blog. It was published here first during the week of Halloween 2012... see Watrous & Valmora (Part 1). And since the story is here, on the blog, I thought I would rather just offer a few bits of acknowledgement for some of the characters and scenes that appear in the tale.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:. Watrous and Valmora, New Mexico

Watrous & Valmora: In the spring of 2012, while finishing up this story, (during what turned out to be long Colorado / New Mexico road trips), I often passed this sign for two towns that screamed out to me as likely characters names in an Edward Gorey book. And I suppose, you might notice, the characters go un-named at the beginning of the tale, because as yet, they didn't have names. I adopted these town names Watrous and Valmora to the characters, yet I have to admit I still haven't been to these towns. I do hope, out of curiosity, to some day see what is there!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:. New Mexico scarecrow photo by pinconnected

The scarecrow: There is a very odd bogle in this story (part two), that our characters discover during their unintended raid of a night-time pumpkin patch. It's not your average anthropomorphic scarecrow, but instead described as a mix of various materials such as wood and Christmas tinsel, and the entirety moans as it spins about on the wind. The above photo was a huge inspiration on that "character" and is one my favorite scenes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Carbon (right) and work by Kilkennycat

Carbon: And finally a big thank-you for the posting of this adorable photo by artist on flickr Kilkennycat that inspired a few things in part three.  For beginners, I was very taken with this cute cat's name Carbon, which was the name bestowed to a very affable talking cat that helps Valmora on her adventure. That cat in the story lives on a farm owned by none other than the Kilkenny's (as another nod to the artist). Yet this also had me curious about the origin of Kilkenny cats which is  terminology based on an older story from the old world. You can read more about that in this wikipedia article (Kilkenny cat), that in turn inspired a bit of the story where Carbon mentions singing the lyrics of an old song.

Bindlegrim books in need of a new home. PS - Cover art is by David Irvine

Well that's it for now, and next week will feature notes on the next to the last story in the book - another of The Pumpkinheart Tales. In the meantime, thank-you to all who found their way to a copy of the book in either print (on Amazon or Etsy) or the Kindle/iPad e-book version which is available by loan (for a short time) or for purchase. And hope you are having fun during this giveaway...!

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***

1) From Feb 24th to Mar 2nd - leave a blog comment here about whatever you like... about cats, witches, memories of trick-or-treat, recommended reading...

2) For each author-notes blog entries, I will draw randomly at the end of that week to give the commenting visitor a signed printed copy of Tall Tales Shorter Days.

3) At the end of all six blog entries I will draw from ALL comments (more commenting visits, more chances to win) for one Bindlegrim lantern - The Horrid Decor (Orange on Ghost Skin) seen below.

Note - Bindlegrim encourages and hopes, but does not require, that readers might leave a Like or a Review on the Amazon pages for the book: print or e-book.

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***